Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit
rzwitserloot | on: EU ban on destruction of unsold clothes and shoes enters into application
It's a somewhat blunt instrument used to internalize some externalities: Making a product and then destroying it is wasteful, and the market will fix all internalized costs of that waste, but some of those costs are externalized. Having society pay somewhat for producing clothes that are then worn, that's one thing. Having society pay for pointless waste is another.

What you've said is: Looking only at the internalized costs, pointless-wasting a percentage of clothes costs X but reduces clothes cost in the store by Y, with Y being larger than X.

Okay. Irrelevant - that math doesn't include externalized costs. It may well be that this is a stupid idea, but "market decided destroying some clothes was more efficient" doesn't prove anything unless you can show that the size of the externalized costs to this process are 0 or close enough to 0 to have no meaningful relevance.

loeg | parent | next
You could internalize the cost of waste more generically by charging appropriately for landfill use and letting producers decide how much it's worth avoiding waste. Instead of just banning a particular waste stream by a particular industry, with distortive consequences.
loading story #48960662
SpicyLemonZest | parent
Again, the waste is not pointless, it's part of an inventory management strategy to ensure adequate supply. If your local grocery store established a policy that they'll never buy more meat than they're sure they can sell before the expiration date, they'd routinely run out.
IneffablePigeon | root | parent | next
The result of laws like this is not that the store will never buy too much, it’s that when they do buy too much they will give it away to somewhere it can be used instead of destroying it. It will not cost them much if any more to simply give things to food banks or charity shops.
loeg | root | parent | next
It in fact does cost them more to give things than to destroy them.
rzwitserloot | root | parent
... and it costs society more to process the destroyed waste, and it costs society more to then deal with the fallout of shelters not having enough clothes.

Or not. Who knows. The point is, this 'economically it is more efficient' is not a proven case because the externalities need to be taken into account, and so far the person I've been responding to seems to not understand this part, or is ignoring it.

loading story #48963822
loading story #48960828
SpicyLemonZest | root | parent
It's not so easy to give things away at scale. If someone deposited 500 kilograms of assorted meat products outside your front door right now, with a note attached saying they need to be consumed or frozen in the next 24 hours or they'll go bad, how much work would it take for you to deal with that?

Clothing is of course a bit easier to deal with (it'll still grow mildew if you don't protect it from moisture!), but the source link explicitly anticipates there will be some circumstances where it's impossible to give away clothing and authorizes destruction in that case.

Dylan16807 | root | parent
Is that scenario supposed to be relevant?

This isn't some random guy. Their entire job is dealing with the logistics of big piles of clothes, and they have months in advance to plan.

loading story #48962570
jyounker | root | parent
Do you have proof of that assertion?
loading story #48959645